Beyond the Blueprint: Revolutionizing Business Processes with Josh Veldman

It is the 4Ps, as I call it, Process people, purpose, and platform. The most power comes from actually going into your staff at every level and finding out their specific portion of the process. How many times in your business do you double up on work because you don't have that history of that customer? You have to go and ask someone that dealt with that customer. Right. A CRM takes that.

Okay, Josh, I'm absolutely thrilled to have you here and to share some of your wisdom today. And one thing I'll say before we jump in is one of the cool parts of, I would say my last two or three years is the ability to collaborate and build team members around me who are just smarter and more innovative in ways that I think complement nicely to what I know. And you're definitely the person I think of where I always know you and I have amazing conversations. We're always, you know, having those conversations about what the future could look like and innovative ways that we can continue to be better. And it's always the conversations that you and I have are always the areas that me as you know, as a CEO and running a company, those are the conversations that we need to spend more time on. And thank you for joining today to talk about a few of these areas that you and I get an opportunity to jump into. But, you know, one of the areas that I'm not particularly knowledgeable about, that I wanted you to share a little bit about, is the art of maybe process mapping and what that looks like inside an organization, because we know it's important. But when you think of process mapping, what does that mean to you and how do we get good at it?

Yeah. So, I mean, I like to start with talking about what process mapping is in terms of. When people hear that, they go, okay, what. What is that? What exactly is that? And. And it's really diving into the service lines that your business offers and then breaking that out into the pieces that make up that service line and delving into some elements that we'll. We'll talk about, I'm sure, in a bit, that make up that service line, the different resources, the different elements that make up that service line. And so process mapping is basically just taking that out and making it visually apparent to you and being able to look at it in front of you. That's kind of the simplistic version of. Of process mapping.

Yeah. And, you know, I know this is an area too, where, you know, as we're coaching business owners and we're going through it in our own way and continuing to Evolve and to learn. I know mapping out the process and systemization of businesses is maybe one of the more daunting tasks that business owners face. And the reason is that everybody typically, especially when we're in the process of building a team, everybody's so busy just trying to deal with what's going on. And for business owners, I know you're going through this and I know that you've got client deliverables and you've probably got 24 hours that could be scheduled out right now without taking a break. We know that that's the case. But the importance of starting to look at processes and systemizing our business, this is where we can build the team in and allow them to take charge, take ownership over some of those deliverables and help support us realize our vision. Because what we do know is that if we're going as a one man sort of deliverable system, the capacity of what we can deliver is going to be capped. Whereas if we take a little bit more time, we start looking at our systems, our processes, how to map them out, how to document them and enable others to take ownership over it. That's where we can really blossom, which is cool. And I think that's really. Josh, what this is, is Right. Starting to take the concept of that and bringing it to life through some mapping.

Yeah. So depending on, on where you're at, it might be that you want to scale from, you know, five people that are really good or it's a single person, as you mentioned, and that says, hey, I don't want to just be doing this by myself anymore. I want to include other people. I want to grow my business from what it is. How do I pass that knowledge on? Well, part of mapping out the processes is part of how you pass that on to others. And not only that, for me, it also is important because it helps me identify the areas where I'm bringing value to whoever I'm serving and maybe the areas where I'm not bringing value or the areas where I'm, you know, maybe losing a lot of money or it's really inefficient versus where I'm, where I can find efficiencies and things that I can automate. So that's, that's why it's really critical. And what you find out after you've done this process, you get to the other side and you actually discover that you've saved yourself a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of energy just by simply examining those processes and seeing them in front of you, for sure.

And you know, I think, and as an accountant, I always think of risk, right? And I always think of how do we limit exposure, how do we limit risk, how do we make sure that we're protecting the baby that's making the money? And, you know, even when we start to include team members, right, it's not going to be perfect. Team members aren't the business owners. Sometimes team members decide to pursue other opportunities. You know, when I think of risk and documenting systems, it's not even just us. Although if something happens to us and nobody knows what the hell we're doing, you know, that's going to be a problem too. But, but think, think of that as the team member as well, where, you know, you've put a team member in, they're responsible for delivering. If you or no one else really knows what they're delivering, you've got a high risk. If something happens to them or they decide to leave or they get sick or their family moves to a different region and they're off. You know, the risk for you as your business is that you won't be able to deliver on that and your client satisfaction is going to really suffer and you as the business owner are probably going to try and jump in and save the day, but man, oh man, you've got all those other things to do. So when I think of systems and processes, I think of risk mitigation to say, how do we protect the business to be able to deliver going forward in the future? And Josh, I know you've got a lot of expertise in process optimization and even experience with implementing other tech solutions. Do you want to talk about maybe some of your experience and some of the things that you've enjoyed?

Yeah, well, I always kind of take us sometimes back to the beginning of when I first got into the accounting industry and it was my first tax season working at a firm, and I saw two to three people basically crawling over each other at the front desk to book people into a physical, a physical appointment book. And then whiting out that physical appointment book if people canceled so they could write other people's names and phone numbers there. So that was my first taste. And you know, that, that there's something that rose up inside of me and I think it's just something natural that was like, this is just a really bad way of doing things. So, so I proposed to the primary at the time in that business, hey, why don't we move to an online booking scheduling solution and people can book.

From a link how long ago was.

This, this would have been 2010 or 2011.

Yeah, like it hasn't been that long. Right. As, as a new evolutionary and innovative way to do it. So that's cool.

Yeah. Yeah. And so as soon as we get. So you know, she, she said yeah, let's, let's give it a shot. And then she came back to me that year and she said, you know what, we've basically decreased 70% of the, of the missed times that we had. So she used to have times where, where there were spaces where she didn't have people coming in to do taxes with her and that was lost money for the business. And instead we, we decreased that by, by 70% in that first year. And so she was extremely happy obviously because she, she was making more money. And that, that kind of mentality of, of continually developing and innovating has consistently stayed with me. One of the also more recent ones was working. That company got acquired and the company I was working for after that, they wanted me to manage their, their corporate tax team. And that team, when I took it over was the least profitable and the, the biggest money suck in the, in the business. And we flipped that around in about six months and turned that around into the most, the largest profit center within, within the business. And it was by my first thing that I did when I did that was basically sit down, map out all the processes that were going on for the corporate year ends, walk through each step that happened within it and then we broke it down and saw where things were inefficient or where we could serve the client better, where we could provide them more value where, where we weren't actually providing value but we were doing a ton of work and it was, yeah, it was a good experience and you know, continue to work on a new service line of data migrations and continuing to develop that process and you know, seeing what that, what that continues to develop into.

And it's amazing too the idea. So back to process essentially process mapping and learning about all the steps that come in to having something from start to finish and then researching the tools that might be available to do that versus it being manual. And I know, you know, the introduction of the calendar, I'm just imagining the evolution of what happened from a digital calendar all the way to automated responses and follow ups. You know, everybody knows going to the dentist even 10 years ago, they probably had a manually booking system, but their process was always make sure there's always a full seat in the dentist chair. Right. Which was typically staffed by people which still is, and I want to talk about that in a second, but staffed by people which were constantly calling to say, are you going to be there? Are you going to be there? Are you going to be there? So that the dentist when that time showed up that they had a revenue generating a spot in their business. And this has been an ongoing role with that position in a dentist office for years now. The evolution adding in the digital calendar is now that you get emails, text messages and the phone calls from the person. So not only have you eliminated it by making the physical call, but you're now tripling down on three ways to communicate with people to ensure that they hit that seat. And I know a lot of people, and we'll talk about AI in a minute and some of the technology that's coming out. But I know a lot of times people look at AI and technology as a threat to the workplace where it's going to eliminate jobs. And I think of it like you've identified, you know, this is an opportunity to create efficiencies in a job so that maybe, you know, for that particular system they, they eliminated 70% of the no show clients, but I'm likely guessing they eliminated a lot of the administrative support requirement for managing that schedule. You know, no more whiteout. Right. And so what, what we were able to do likely in that situation is take that administrative support and redeploy it as a value add versus just an administrative role. And I know thinking of calendars like I know for us we use HubSpot and maybe Calendly both as calendar management systems where we've got electronic booking links to have access to, you know, my calendar, your calendar, so that our clients can choose a time that best fits them. And you're still going to get the, the odd client who goes, well, this doesn't seem personalized. And you know, my response is, well, it's actually as personalized as you can get. You have access to my calendar and what's available and you get to on your own time choose what works best for you. And then we're going to set up a system to follow up and make sure that you don't forget. Because we know how important your time is, but we also want to respect the importance of our time too. And it's an incredible process and evolution. But I really do feel strongly instead of focusing on technology eliminating jobs, maybe technology can just focus on creating greater efficiency so we can redeploy our resources to add more value than other people are willing to do. So that's My perspective on things, I 100% agree.

Sorry, just to interject, there is like our business from there did not get. We didn't minimize the amount of staff that we had. In fact, we grew from that position. Right. As we continued to develop those technologies, we grew so fast that we actually had to move to a whole brand new office so that we could take on the new staff that we were needing to take on the new business that we were now able to. To manage. So we were actually hiring more people, not less, as a, as a result of that, but we were doing something different. We weren't crawling over each other to write in a book.

Yeah, right. And the. So one of the things that I've always been a huge advocate for, and maybe it's just part of my educational background, but is like eliminating the risk of human error, you know, and the manual booking of a calendar, you know, the chance of you writing this down and maybe not sending an email to the person with the exact right time. It just creates so much opportunity for human error. We want to make sure that we're always as close to the data as possible. And if we can create a system that has no, no flaws or no risk of essentially putting in a number the wrong way, you know, it just, it helps us deliver more. And back to your point about the staffing in your situation, you know, it didn't reduce the staff, but I guarantee you the resources that were available. You know, let's say the business was $1 million and it grew to 2 million. Well, I bet you your resources were capped at a million. And then with this new efficiency, you created this new opportunity to redeploy those resources so that maybe your admin team could take on $2 million of revenue with that existing team because they had the capacity to be able to do it. So technology can so much be our friend and enable our team. If you've got a busy team, you got a busy team. They're feeling overwhelmed. Look at ways that technology can help them create efficiency to get control back over their schedule. Like it's, you know, I know Josh, Josh is. I mentioned this in the intro, but Josh is our chief Innovation officer and really responsible for a lot of new concepts, new ideas and efficiencies being brought forward with our team. And like, I know this is the space we live in, but wow, you know, what a powerful approach for all entrepreneurs. Listening. Find your tech, find your efficiencies, enable your team to be able to deliver more than less and essentially empower them with the opportunity to have eliminated risk with delivery wherever we can. And I think it's, you know, I think that's super powerful.

And one other value add to that is once you start releasing, you know, your staff members, especially those that might be, you know, more senior in that. In the case of working with her, I was, I was doing a lot of work to kind of help manage stuff while she was just trying to do tax returns. Once I eliminated the management of all of that stuff that was going on, she said to me, hey, I need help doing these tax returns. Are you interested in learning how to do tax returns? So as, as someone that's a business owner or whatever it might be, once you start implementing these efficiencies as part of your process development, you actually will probably start freeing up those people so that they can take some of the items that you are carrying so that you can then free up your time. So it just benefits all, all around for your business and allows you to grow as a business owner 100%.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. All right, so I took us on a bit of a tangent there, but one of the areas you were talking about was actually going through and mapping out the processes, you know, in your particular system. It was the tax season and mapping out all the processes and then creating efficiencies for. For a business owner in any sort of business, how or what is the best way to approach that in their business so they can start mapping out their own processes?

Yeah, so what I wouldn't recommend is that they go and look up BPMN business Process modeling notation and try to do a crash course in that. I don't recommend that at all. And so my personal thing that I did is I kind of distilled it down to four different areas, and that was essentially the process or this, the specific step, the process within the process. Essentially a specific step that you had to take as part of that you had people. And then it is the 4Ps, as I call it, Process, people, purpose and platform. And so purpose is, why are you doing that step? And the platform is, are you using tech to do, to help you do that step? And so essentially what you do for each kind of, you know, step, you label that, that's the process piece, you label what, what the step is that you go through. Let's say a client comes in the door and you are adding them to some sort of system. That's your first step. And then the question is, who's the person that's responsible for adding them in? Is it three different people. Is it one person already? You have something to discuss there, right? And then you look at, okay, why do we add them in? Oh, because we need them in the system. Okay, that's good. And then the last thing is, what platform are we using to capture their names in? Are we, are we doing it just in a notebook? Are we doing it in some CRM, all that kind of thing. So once you start going down your steps and you start like laying these four things out, you start, even as you walk through mapping it, you start having these discussions and you start to understand, oh man, we have three different people doing one thing. All of this, this kind of stuff. One key thing while you're doing this as well, I would say is you want to really make sure the temptation is to be like, okay, we're going to change this right now. I really, really recommend map first, change later, get the full mapping of your process. The, the reason being because sometimes you might want to, you have this temptation to be like, oh, we got three people doing this one thing. And you don't realize why you have those three people doing that, that one thing that might affect something further down. So map the whole thing out with these four items. Again, that's the, the process or that specific step, the people that are involved in that step. The reason why you do that step, what value add does it have? And then the platform that you're using to kind of capture that information or move that information or utilize that information, essentially.

So I'm going to ask you this because I think, I think I know what the answer would be for me. Do you think it's valuable that the business owner even stay out of that element of the business in, in tracking that? Like, I, and the reason I ask is that I think, like, you identified, I very quickly would be like, let's solve the problem instead of going through the process of it and laying it out. I would probably be challenging everything along the way. And, and instead of letting it all play out, I think maybe for me involving somebody else and mapping that out would be great. And then I come in and review it with them and, and challenge it at that point and let them own that. What's your thought on that?

100%. So the, the temptation is always to, to like immediately fix things, right? Especially as a business owner or even like a senior manager, you just, you want to jump in there and fix things as soon as you start, like moving through the process. But the most power comes from actually going into your staff at every level and finding out their specific portion of the process and using it as a collaborative thing. So if you have like three or four layers of staff that are a part of your process, or three or four different people, you want to get them all in a room and you want to work together and map together, number one. What that does is it helps the people in various parts of the process to understand the other people that are a part of that process. But it also fosters that collaborative environment that, hey, we're working on this together. And then out of that starts to come like, hey, I do this, but you're also doing that. Maybe we should figure out a way to do that together. And so they start working amongst each other instead of, you know, you as a business owner or someone as a senior manager coming in and just being like, hey, this is the new way that we're going to do things. Because it seems like it's a, it's a better standard and it really allows you to see and understand and that purpose for that specific step, it's important for that to come from those individuals that are actually carrying out that step. Now you may look at that and say, well, that purpose is not aligned with our business values or what we're, we're seeking to deliver. But it's important when you first do that mapping that you understand why they were carrying out that. And it's like, actually we're going to have to tweak this step because our actual purpose for this step is, is supposed to be something completely different. Right. And we're going to have a conversation around that. But when it initially happens, you really want to be looking at that, that with your whole team, with whoever's involved in that actual process. And my, in my work as a, as a process and analyst, a business analyst, before I got into accounting, we were always speaking to the people like the boots on the ground. We were interested in what was actually being done by the people. Not interesting in hearing the guy, you know, 16 levels up in the, in the governmental organization, what his view of it was. We were interested in what was actually happening on the ground.

Totally. Now I'm going to challenge this a little bit for a second and I want your, your insight on it. So, like, that process sounds fairly intimidating as a business owner. And the reason is, I think of all the resources that would be put in the room and working on this. Definitely know the value, see the value in, in getting that outlined and being able to be recreated over and over again. Right. Like the McDonald's is of, of how we do things over and over and create efficiencies and likely better outputs. My one thought is, and I know that I've heard other people talk about this is actually having somebody go through recording themselves doing the work as a means to say, okay, we very quickly want to pull this process together, we want to map it out. If we record ourselves on zoom, walking through or going through the motions of doing all of the elements and every step from the beginning to the end, is that sort of a cheat code for someone like me who probably, if, if someone had to document what I was doing one, I think it'd be hard because it's all over the map at all times. But it's, if it was, if it was me, you know, I think the easiest way for me would be to record it and then have someone else go, this is how you're actually supposed to do it, Bob, based on how you were doing things, Map it out on my behalf. Is that maybe a little bit of a cheat code for business owners or high level executives to start this process?

100%. And to take that one level further, one of the tools that we use is Loom. So when we use Loom, and if it's kind of gotten used to you, it has the AI feature, but it also has a transcript. So as you're walking through that, if you use Loom, for example, on your phone or something like that, and you're just talking to it, walking through your process, it will capture that full transcript. You can then take that transcript in its entirety. This is getting a little nerdy. But if you have a ChatGPT account, you can take that into ChatGPT and say, hey, hey, take this conversation and summarize it into steps and it will actually turn it into specific steps. And then from there you can say, okay, that's my beginning of each one of my steps in my process. Now we can talk about who does it, why I do it, you know, all those different, different types of, of things. So again, we're going to delve into AI, I'm sure, and talk about that a little bit more. But that's just one of the ways where at 100%, you can just, you know, record yourself, take that transcript, you know, have, have that set out process with the multiple steps that you can kind of iterate or hone in on just by recording and pasting that totally.

All right, so let's, let's hop into tech because we're circling around it. So we talked about Loom, which I absolutely love Loom in Fact for most client communication now so that people have an ease of being able to view things on their own schedule. You know, I always think of the importance of everybody's time. You know, if I can, instead of having a booked meeting where somebody has to come to my office and sit at a boardroom table and listen to me go through, this is where all your cash and money went based on your profit and how your taxes turned out. If I can turn that into a 7 to 10 minute loom video that you can watch on your way home from work. Just think of the amount of time that I've saved that business owners, we're always looking at different tools to be able to do that. You're not using Loom super powerful. The other sort of cheat code for me on Loom is I can also tell when you've watched it, which is also fantastic because if people are asking questions and you say, well, just watch the loom video that I created for you. I've got all of the answers in there. I can tell when you've watched it. So I can tell whether or not you're asking insightful questions or whether or not you've just been ignoring all the work that I put in. So, so different things like that for Loom transcripts, super important. So we've got, we've got Loom, we've got Chad GPT that can take that information and start building it out in different formats based on what we tell it to do. And, and for those of you who haven't really got into chat GPT, like I'm really on the surface level, but man, when you start asking it weird things and it comes back and gives you those weird things back and you're like, wow, that might have just saved me three or four hours worth of work. And I did it all. There's all my raw data. But how do I make this all come into one nice document and it pulls that in. You should probably just experiment with it a little bit. Josh, what other tools? Thinking of systems and documentation and even innovative tools that people should be considering for their business outside of systems. What are your, what's your kind of top list of things that we should.

Consider in terms of technology? I mean, the biggest thing of course that I feel strongly about, and I'm sure you do too, is as a CRM, like some sort of client relationship. If you don't have one, you need to have one. If you're not managing your clients in a specific area, you should be doing that because realistically that's actually the best way to serve your, your clients going forward. A lot of times what will happen is without that, you end up chasing information or trying to ask for things over and over or you know, just doubling up on efforts and stuff like that. So that's the big one.

And if I could jump in on that one, Josh, for a minute because for many of you, you've heard of Gary Vaynerchuk and Gary was maybe one of my first innovative tech guys that I started following and more. So he comes in from a marketing perspective, but really, you know, when you think of marketing, marketing is just a way to communicate and build awareness of what you know and how you can help. And he probably introduced me to the idea of a CRM platform first and the client relationship management tool to be able to just think of this, imagine this. If you're not using one, imagine being able to send a message to all of your clients at one time. And even if it's not a danger warning, it's a proactive way to say, hey all clients, we've got this new service, we've got this new innovative solution for you getting in front of your existing clients who already know like trust and have experience in working with you and, and feel good about it, solving the problems that they have that maybe you couldn't before. Like what a powerful, powerful way to interact with our clients. And I know for us only because we were just looking at this statistic, but I believe our team is somewhere between 12 and 15 emails to our client list every single month. Now we don't want to overdo it. Right. I feel like an everyday email is too much. That's an opt out situation. But, but looking at it and saying, you know, are there two times a week that we could introduce something or provide a resource to our clients to better inform them, to get them thinking about different ways to do things. You know, that's our job. And it's such a powerful tool that not only does that, but it can create a whole bunch of automations. Anyway, that was me geeking out on it a little bit, Josh. But you're bang on is such a powerful tool.

One other thing too is that it's a value add. So when I think about also, you know, using our time wisely, not doubling up on work, you know, how many times in your business do you double up on work because you don't have that history of that customer. You have to go and ask someone that dealt with that customer. Right? A CRM takes that and it puts that history of that customer in a lot of cases, right into a single area. So you can see when you, you know, had that phone conversation, you can see when that email went out. You can see all of those different types of things backwards and forwards. You can mine that data for, for, you know, information when you jump into the next call with that client so that you're not going in blind. Or you can also just use it to do, you know, have your staff bringing just a really great experience to them. Oh, even if you're, you know, like an H vac business, you know, you've put in there, you know what, what kind of furnace they have, what kind of water heater. You don't have to ask them when they call up saying, hey, my water heater is broken. You don't have to say, hey, can you go down and get me the serial number from your water heater and everything like that. You got that right there in your system and you can say, I do still have that water heater. You haven't switched it out. We know the serial code. We got that all last time. It's all in our, in our CRM and we can order you a new part and we can have that in the next day and we can be over there. Right. And if you would typically send out a tech to go and get that information, even you've just saved yourself money from sending a tech out there.

And even to be able to say, you know, this, you've had this hot water heater for five years now. It typically at a five year mark starts to have some challenges and maybe you need to consider trading that in for the new one. But because that info is already there, you can actually sort that data and say, who bought five years ago? Let's talk to them about upgrading. Because there's more efficient technology now to help them save money for hydro and, and maybe fuel cost. So, you know, there's so much power in there and I know, I know our team probably uses it. I would have said before it was much lower, but I'd say we probably use it to 70% of its potential. But there's so much power in there. Okay, CRM is a must. I agree. What else should we be incorporating into our business, Josh?

The second one would be probably some sort of. Once you've, and I say this like, I would typically go through the process of mapping out my service lines of my business, figuring out what people are in there, you know, what they're doing and all of that kind of stuff. And once I have that And I take a look at the different things that I'm utilizing. Maybe I've got an email client here, I've got a document thing here, I've got storage over here. I've got all of that over there. Then you start to want to consider about, like, is there ways that you can amalgamate things? So I call them like practice management tools. You know, we use an incredible one internally carbon, that really helps us all stay in line with the work that needs to get done, especially the boots on the ground, the people that are completing work. It helps keep everyone aligned and keep everyone moving forward and gives visibility. And so that's the second thing that I would say, like when you, you're talking about relationship with the client now how about doing the actual work for the client? How are you, you know, making sure that you're lining that up, scheduling that in all of that kind of stuff and that that comes into the practice management tool. And depending on what kind of business you're in for lawyers, that's going to be Clio for somebody that might be in the trades, that might be Jobber or Field Edge or something along those lines. So that's, that's obviously something that, that I would be looking at very strongly for sure.

And, and just, you know, thinking of this even to the next level. Find one that integrates with your CRM platform, right? What power to think of your introduction to your client and all of the deployment of resources to deliver for them. What if all of that was in one place? Oh, my goodness. And then thinking of being able to bill from that same solution as well. So like a Jobber or a Clio, for example. Good, good choices there. And examples, Josh, thinking of Jobber, being able to go out on a call, being able to collect your money, invoice everything right while you're at the client's location. It guarantees cash, it improves cash flow, it allows for delegation to team members, automation, you know, it's just so powerful. So love that practice management tool, CRM integration of the two. Incredible. What else you got, Josh?

Well, I'm sure this is going to be a given, but I'm going to say a bookkeeping software because, because we're an accounting firm. But really pretty key is to have a good set of books. So I'm always going to recommend that that's going to be a given in there. And the really cool thing about things like Jobber and Clio and all of these different ones, Field Edge, I could go on and on and on, is that so many of them have connections with items like essentially the one that we typically use is QuickBooks Online. There's a couple other ones, but a lot of them have integrations with QuickBooks Online. So you kind of start building this, people would call it a tech stack. You start building this tech stack that really turns your business into a robust and scalable enterprise. Not just something that you're doing or something that you've got in your head or something that you know, but something that people can come in and be a part of and take ownership of specific pieces.

Absolutely. And, and for context, for anybody who's, who's listening in here, we use HubSpot as our CRM, which essentially manages and tracks all of our leads coming in. So whenever somebody would watch a podcast and inquire about how maybe Josh and I could support them in optimizing their systems or building a more high performance business, you know, there's typically. And we'll have links attached to this podcast as well to connect with us. Right. One program we have is our million dollar a year program where we have discussions about how to build out the systems, how to create the tech stack, how to better utilize your solutions like QuickBooks Online. So HubSpot for us brings data in. It also gives people an entry point to automatically get onto our calendar. So for a lot of it, you know, when somebody reaches out to us and they say we want to help, they have an option to get on our calendar immediately. So it eliminates one of the higher risks, which I believe is the follow up component or delays in getting back to people when they're eager to, to move forward. So CRM does that and then our CRM goes into essentially a practice management solution, which is Carbon, but also attacks another program that we call Ignition, where it essentially collects and tracks all of the project creation and the contracts. So all of those things are connected and talking to each other and they're all, you know, again, talking to QuickBooks Online so that I don't have to re, redo any of that information. All of that information goes into one system. It's then into all of the systems, at least in the areas that it needs to be, and then all the way down into our QuickBooks Online, where you know, a contract is signed, it's outlined, it's agreed upon. As soon as that's signed by the client, it triggers an Invoice in our QuickBooks Online, it triggers a project in our Carbon, and it also leaves detail and history in our HubSpot to show exactly what the client was interested in and, and what maybe their pain points are so that if another challenge comes up, we can go back, revisit those notes. We can see the serial number. Like Josh talked about, super powerful to be able to have that sort of tech stack or innovative tools working together. What did we miss related to innovation and tech, Josh?

Not much other. The only last thing I would say is, and that's the one that people sometimes get hung up on is something to manage your communic, not externally. That would be your CRM. You want to leave that to your CRM. But when you're talking about internally, you probably don't want to be using your CRM to communicate internally because there's various things going on. So it's really choosing about an internal communication tool. Things like Slack teams, Zoom Chat, there's, there's just obviously so many out there that you can utilize. But finding out ways that your team can communicate internally that everyone's going to agree upon, that everyone is going to be a part of, can also be really powerful. Again, when you have all those conversations in one place, usually as administrator, you have that history, you have that ability to look back and to see, you know, what kind of conversations have been happening and really track things. So that's, that's one other huge thing that I would, I would also say is if you have a team making sure that that team is all communicating in the same way, not a group of them are calling, a group of them are texting, a group of them are on a Slack, you know, all over the place. Find that all in one place and agree upon that one place where you can all have that communication together.

Yeah, and we, again, for context, we use teams. We just felt like that was a nice integrative solution with everything else. So all our, not all, but the majority of our internal communication is through teams and teams channels. We also used Outlook for outgoing sort of messages. So not, not always through a CRM, but if it's related to deliverables, we go through Outlook, but everything is connected and all of the emails that we send through Outlook go in our practice management solution. So, you know, if there's a challenge or there's an issue, we can always go back and see how that issue happened to learn from it or to see if that issue actually did happen, which sometimes is the case too. But to be able to have that support and that information in one place is so, so powerful. Josh, I'm going to leave you with one more question. And the question is, what should we be thinking about for the future. So thinking of the future of innovation and technology, what is some of your wisdom that you want to leave with us to be thinking about as we move into the future?

Well, you know, I love AI, so there's, there is that aspect. But a lot of times people are going to look at the future and they're going to be concerned about the future. We mentioned that a little bit. And I've always been of the mind that the future is an exciting thing and that you got to lean into the future. So I encourage everyone that's listening lean into the future, don't be afraid of it, and think about how it can help you. One example that I quickly jotted down when I was thinking about some items for this podcast was think about the fact that you can go on ChatGPT and because it's, you know, read all these documents and, and, you know, business documents and all this kind of stuff, you could even ask it related to your processes. What is the best way to make a taco? Or what is the best way to do this? Or what is the best way to do that, to even get a baseline for, for where you want to work from. So don't think of AI as something that is, you know, scary. Don't think of it as something that you, you can't get into. I always recommend people go and sign up for a ChatGPT account and just ask it, you know, just try to see, hey, how would you do this service line in my business? And it's going to be looking through all of these documents, scraping the web text, all of that, and, and give information back to you and you might find that revelatory and that will start your conversation with, with AI, hopefully. So embrace AI and what it's, what it's going to bring. At the same time, I'm always of the firm mind that AI has to be balanced out with the continued development of the people that are, that are a part of our companies, whether it's ourselves or whether it's the people that are working for us. It's really important that we understand that they, as things progress forward, that they also need to progress forward. So we need to be able to, to move the people in our companies forward. And the only way, again, going back, in my humble opinion, the only way to, to bring people forward, maybe taking on things that I used to do so that I can move forward into, you know, a new future, is for me to create those processes so that they can take that, that information on. So, yeah, that's, that's what I would say is embracing AI. Think about the ways that you can take what it is that you do and turn it into, to something that you can parse out in some sort of steps. Take a small thing to start with. Maybe it's a simple business line that you have. Maybe it's a process that you have for just going into a consultation meeting or something like that. Just start with something like that and then start to see where it goes from there. And I guarantee you're going to see the value add when you realize, hey, I might have a process here that I can pass on to someone else and then I can scale my business and I can generate more revenue and bring in more profit, which is, I think, what everyone here wants to do.

We're trying to do that, we're trying to do that. And then with that creating an even greater impact. Without question. Josh, I always love chatting with you, man. It's, it's always a pleasure. You always leave me thinking, excited about what the future holds. And, you know, I think that's a pretty powerful thing in entrepreneurship. I think we have to find those people who continue to inspire us to think bigger, to think about what the future could look like. Because if we reflect back on all the things and the war ruins that we've got from the past and that's all we focus on, you know, it's going to be really challenging to head into the future with an optimistic and positive mindset. So, Josh, thank you so much guys. Josh is also a member and a coach inside our million dollar year program as well. Josh hangs out with us. We bring him in to talk about all things innovation. But if defining your systems and your processes and getting them started in your business, you want to learn more about that, check out. We'll put a link below about our million dollar year program. In essence, that's one arm talking about how we can systemize and streamline our processes so that we can create efficiencies so we can scale our business. Josh, once again, thanks for being here today.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely, my pleasure. And for those that are listening, this is a wealthy entrepreneur podcast. Leave a comment there's something that inspired you. Throw it in the chat. We always want to continue to evolve this podcast. If you have questions, throw it in there. We'll get them answered. If you haven't, follow this podcast. We're going to release an episode every single day. We're coming up to our first year of having an episode every single week that's being released. So don't. You don't want to miss what's coming up next. But also, if you like any of this information or you think it applies to someone else that you think could, could help, make sure you share it. We were essentially here. We want to empower all entrepreneurs with good information, mainly financially confident information, so that they can take their business with confidence, make informed decisions, and ultimately, together we can change the world. Guys, thanks for being here today. This has been the wealthy entrepreneur. Have a great day.